Lemme tell y'all something about "age"...

[paleotn]

17. There is no substitute for wisdom and experience. And those are part and parcel with age.

That's why, since the beginning of our species, societal leadership has primarily been the old guys. Life is mainly a series of rhymes, since history doesn't exactly repeat itself. So, "been there, done that" is invaluable when things inevitably "rhyme" with something that happened before. That's why, outside of our anomalous society, older people are generally revered.

In my field, young engineers sometimes think us old guys are fearless. Not really. It's just that the set of things that worry us is smaller so we seem to rarely get flustered. We trust our experience and judgment, which has been honed over years of trial, and error and are less apt to waste time second guessing ourselves. We've automatically done the due diligence already that they're trying to figure out how to do. In short, we were doing this shit when the young guys were in diapers, so it doesn't scare us as much anymore. And we're generally quicker at solving problems than the seemingly young and nimble because of it.

One of the wisest parts of the Christian bible is Ecclesiastes 1:5 - What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.